Chris,
Thanks for the kind words but this was definitely a joint effort. You had done a lot of flight testing looking at this method and many of the recommended parameter settings and the advanced tuning section on waypoint flight was your work. It was a pleasure working with you on this and look forward to continued efforts to advance the Trad Heli code. Lastly thanks to @Leonardthall for sharing his tuning method with me. This is a more methodical and less risky approach to tuning a helicopter.
That is a great tool first of all and thanks to all who has taken part in it. I have been reading every note of Bill and Chris and they are all in itself a a wiki code for me. While I was reading the new setup, I had all the headlines passing by that has a problem related to it
It couldn’t be any better than this, good work folks…
Unfortunately, I am not able to help with the Mission Planner problem, as I have only used that software maybe a couple times, ever.
In my opinion it would be helpful for all the ground station softwares to detect when a heli frame is connected and not even display the Basic, Advanced or Extended Tuning pages, and only show the Full Parameter List and setup pages. It should be doable because none of them will display tabs for those pages unless a board is connected. And more than one person setting up a heli for the first time has been tripped up by using those pages to make settings to their heli. And then can’t figure out why critical settings got messed up because the ground station software tries to be too helpful and resets things into ranges it “thinks” are valid.
It is a constant warning we have to make all the time for new folks setting up a heli the first time.
Chris, good points. I support your suggestions to get rid of those pages if they don’t work. I personally never looked at those again since 3.3 came out. For a first time Heli setup person it must be a frustrating situation at the moment. Thanks a lot Chris, Bill and Leonardt Hall.
Pitt, we would definitely need your help for tandem heli’s. The tuning method PR’d was extensively tested on several helicopters. But we don’t have a tandem to test it on.
Hi Pitt,
Are you aware of any ready made kit ( preferably not a very expensive one) with two rotors which we can use to fly the dual heli. I have seen your posts regarding the dual heli but unfortunately most of us do not have the skill/time to build their own frame. A ready made frame makes things a lot easier.
FWIW, I have recently used the mission planner heli-stup and extended tuning pages and has not seen it change values in the full parameter list that it shouldn’t do.
Chris, Unfortunately, no. If the parameter is already below a ‘legal’ value, it’ll keep the current value, so it wont ‘break’ anything. If you are trying to set a legal value to an illegal value, it’ll set it to the lowest allowed.
Winter is here soon, so maybe it’s time to get my coding hat on.
What about the heli setup page? It’s been so long since I looked at MP that I don’t remember. I have it running on one of my Linux laptops but I never use it and always go to APM Planner2.
APM Planner2 does not have a heli setup page.
I would like to mention that Tower on Android with a tablet with a 11-12" screen and a full-size USB port also works quite nicely for setting up a helicopter (and flight planning and for the ground station). Tower only has a Full Parameter List for making settings, and if you click on one it pops up the recommended range and setting increments, but allows setting outside the recommended range if you want. Tower can also do the accel and compass cal. I think the only think it can’t do is radio cal and loading firmware for a full setup from scratch. But I really like Tower for everything else.
I would like to second Chris’ comment. Please read this through and let us know where it needs improvement. We are talking about complicated subjects with the attempt to put them into terms most users can understand. I think this should be understandable by a person that is familiar with RC helicopters (novice level) (i.e. has set up an RC helicopter and has some flight experience). It was difficult to strike a balance for depth and understanding for most users. Also read through the steps and make sure there is enough detail. I know I’m opening a can of worms but we don’t want to be doing this again in six months. If you don’t want to post on this discussion, you can always PM Chris and me. Thanks in advance!
Bill
Thank you so much for doing this! The default values and PID tuning directions are exactly what I need to set up my first heli.
I am getting ready to set up my heli using a Pixracer instead of an APM or Pixhawk. I would be glad to take pics along the way and blog the build if it could be used to improve the wiki.
I thought a Pixracer only has six RC inputs? I guess with 3.5 you can map the throttle channel to 6 but I have no experience with that.
By all means if you want to do a video or picture blog of tuning, post the link. If our PR gets approved I see no reason why it couldn’t be added to the tuning wiki.
I could be (am probably?) incorrect, but I think that it has six servo outputs, which is enough for what I’m doing. I think you can get 16 input channels from FrSky via SBUS, or 8 from PPM. If not, I’m going to have a really trick autopilot for my Nano Skyhunter!
Sorry, yes. That’s what I meant. The throttle can be mapped in 3.5. So it should work to map Heli RSC to SERVO 5 or 6. SERVO 1, 2, 3, 4 respectively to motors 1, 2, 3, 4 respectively (using the naming convention now used in 3.5).
I am punching these settings in for a first-time set up, and I am getting a warning that some of the 0 entries are outside of the acceptable range in Mission Planner. Should I just use the minimum setting in MP, or enter 0 anyway?
